We Share This Humble Path, Alone
by daddiesadruggie
Summary: While Tsuzuki and Hisoka struggle to cope with their respective demons after Kyoto, an investigation of the Kurosaki family dredges up secrets that could destroy the tenuous bonds they've managed to forge. Chapter One Revised!
1. Prologue

Yami no Matsuei does not belong to me. If it did, there would be some kind of resolution to the Gen Sou Kai arc, and thousands of fans would bow to me. This story will struggle to humanize Hisoka as a victim, and as such will contain potentially graphic imagery for the sake of conveying his trauma. His part is based on my own experience, and I would prefer not to receive any flames about him being whiny or that he should get over it already. Aside from that, plenty of good, creepy Yami fun. And I apologize for disregarding the aforementioned Gen Sou Kai arc . . . frankly, I have *no* idea where to go from Hisoka falling through Kurikara's wormhole, so for the sake of this story I've decided to scrap the whole shikigami search in favor of exploring the odd and twisted secrets of the Kurosaki family.  
  
Addendum: Spelling has been changed to protect the innocent ^_^. Thank you very much to everyone who reviewed! When I first wrote this and posted it, I was on my grandmother's P.O.S. computer, in Wordpad, with no spell check. That was all in one sitting. Since transferring it to WordPerfect, I've cleaned it up and made some additions. More comments to follow on top of the first chapter, which *is* coming soon.  
  
P.S. I don't know why the spacing won't spread out more .  
  
When the dark wood fell before me  
  
And all the paths were overgrown  
  
When the priests of pride say there is no other way  
  
I tilled the sorrows of stone  
  
I did not believe because I could not see  
  
Though you came to me in the night  
  
When the dawn seemed forever lost  
  
You showed me your love in the light of the stars  
  
Then the mountain rose before me  
  
By the deep well of desire  
  
From the fountain of forgiveness  
  
Beyond the ice and the fire  
Though we share this humble path, alone  
  
How fragile is the heart  
  
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly  
  
To touch the face of the stars  
  
Breathe life into this feeble heart  
  
Lift this mortal veil of fear  
  
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears  
  
We'll rise above these earthly cares  
  
Cast your eyes on the ocean  
  
Cast your soul to the sea  
  
When the dark night seems endless  
  
Please remember me  
  
-Dante's Prayer  
  
Hisoka is a mental escape artist, exactly the opposite from me. I have more of a habit of locking myself in with my memories than of running away from them. I would like to say I figured this out on my own, but I didn't, really, not without a big push that he didn't mean to give me. For the longest time, I just thought he was really smart. Well, he *is* really smart . . . he reads books that I would never *want* to attempt, and he does it for *pleasure*. Not for pleasure . . . not *really* . . . he does it to lose himself, because if he wraps his mind up in someone else's story, he doesn't have to think about his own. If I ever *did* pick up a book to forget about myself for a while, it would probably be something you could find on the rack at the checkout in a grocery store. Not Fyodor Dostoevsky or Victor Hugo. Hisoka's walls are lined with books by every big name author I've ever heard of, and more by those I haven't. So he's a kid who likes to read (really shouldn't call him a kid), that may be *unusual*, but there's nothing *unnatural* about it.  
  
Outwardly, he seems pretty normal. If you take the word "normal" in stride and temper it to the conditions of Hisoka's life and death. Maybe it's better to say he hides himself well. Not just his true feelings and vulnerabilities with that attitude, which he does, but all the little idiosyncracies that took me so long to add up. I knew he had nightmares. Everyone knew he had nightmares. But I don't think there's *anyone* in the department who *doesn't* have nightmares. If we didn't have things in our pasts to have nightmares about, we probably wouldn't be here. The first thing I really *noticed* was the showers.  
  
Most people bathe in the morning before work, or the night before. Hisoka does both. Not quick rinses either, but long, hour-length affairs that leave the bathroom billowing steam in his wake. I didn't know that until after I had moved into his house. Two *weeks* after, I'm ashamed to say. He gets up so early to do it, as if he doesn't want to be caught at it, like he *knows* there's something unnatural about it. Or, he might just be paranoid of me walking in on him, which is just as likely.  
  
My moving in was entirely his plan, which gives me a pathetically warm and fuzzy feeling to think about. Never mind that it was fueled more by fear and desperation than by affection. I asked in Kyoto if I could stay with him . . . he took it to heart, in a very literal way. By the time I was released from the infirmary, he was already waiting for me, dragging cartons of books out of his spare bedroom (he had been using it as a sort of library for himself up till then, it was all bookshelves and one armchair. All that is in the livingroom now, which I don't particularly like -- makes me feel like I need to whisper) and trying to figure out how to incorporate my seventy years worth of accumulated belongings into his austere living space. He must have been raiding my apartment for days while I was still hospitalized.  
  
The decision was made, he was determined to do it, and I didn't get a choice in the matter. I didn't mind. He ended up throwing a lot of my things away. I didn't mind that either, not really. A decaying paper fan from a 1947 street festival paled in comparison to the fact that Hisoka wanted (was determined to force) me to stay. He said he felt better having me across the hall. I took that as Hisoka-speak that he cared about me, was worried for me and for himself, and found my proximity comforting. Maybe I read a little to deeply, but those are the kind of things Hisoka has trouble putting into words. I suppose he's afraid of reactions. If I had to feel peoples' honest reactions to everything I said or did as constantly and thoroughly as Hisoka does, I doubt I would be very comfortable wearing my heart on my sleeve either. He does trust me at least, more than anyone else anyway, maybe as much as he can possibly trust anyone, and that's something. It's someplace to start.  
  
But it was the showers I noticed first, the carefully hidden, but almost obsessive compulsion for cleanliness and order. Then the locks. It's natural to lock one's front door, even in meifu. A habit left over from earthly living, a minute detail that makes this world a little more real . . . even though it's hardly necessary. Hisoka has a deadbolt, and a lock on every window. In all the time I've been here, I've never seen him voluntarily open a window, unless I ask him to, and he never leaves a room without shutting it and locking it again.  
  
I used to tease him about how bare his house was. I don't anymore. Of course, between his books and my paraphanallia most of the house has a much more lived in look, but his bedroom is still empty. Not even bookshelves. Just the bed, and a night stand with a small lamp and clock radio, and a dresser against the wall with a stereo on it. Nothing extra, and never anything out of place. It was strange, I thought, sad even for a teenager's room which should be cluttered with band posters and CDs and electronics and dirty clothes and personal effects . . . then it occurred to me how he doesn't like the dark. I don't suppose he likes waking up from a nightmare in a room full of shadows either. So I don't tease him anymore.  
  
But I find the stereo encouraging. It's a very teenaged thing to have, and when he shuts himself in his room and starts blaring rock music to let me know he's annoyed with me and doesn't want me to try to talk to him just yet, I can almost imagine he's a normal, bratty teenager. Then again, it also makes me feel like I'm his father, which is an awkward wrench to toss into the oh-so-delicate machinery of our tenuous relationship. I say tenuous not because either of us are going anywhere, we need each other far too much for that, but because of the massive expanses of grey that engulf the details of our feelings, hopelessly obscuring them from any kind of rational interpretation. Even by Hisoka, who deals with translating feelings everyday. There are some emotions he was never exposed to, or exposed to in a negative way, that make the waters separating us too tumultuous for even him to navigate. I wish I could wipe his mind clean, and give him his childhood over again and make him sane. But then he'd be a different person, so I guess I'm too selfish in the end.  
  
I never would have understood his need for books at all, if I hadn't found his journal. I didn't read it, not really . . . I don't know what all he puts in there. Things that are too hard to say out loud, I suppose, or maybe things he doesn't trust me enough to tell me. I don't know that much about him, about his life, when it comes down to it. He doesn't tell and I don't ask. I think someday he'll be able to talk to me . . . at least I hope so. Maybe I'll be able to talk to him too. I'm such a hypocrite.  
  
I wouldn't have found the journal if he hadn't raided my candy drawer. He was angry at me for some mundanely idiotic action, I don't remember what. I didn't believe he'd really been so cruel as to throw it all out, so I was checking his room. I didn't know what it was, when I found it. It was just lying there under his bed, an unimportant marble notebook. Case notes maybe, or something left over from one of his incognito forays into a school, lost and forgotten. I should have just put it back. It was the most brutally, disturbingly honest part of Hisoka I've seen to date. I really, truly didn't *really* read it. To be honest, I'm not sure I could have if I'd wanted too -- all the writing was jagged and haphazard, rushed and furious. Written in the heat of the moment, maybe when he woke up from a nightmare, or maybe it's just a daily part of him. In any case, it was nothing like the neat, precise handwriting that filled our reports or labeled our files, and it was interspersed with rough, angry looking images scribbled darkly in pencil, none of which I wanted to examine too closely.  
  
The page I landed on was somewhat neater than most of the writing, more organized and coherent. "Things I Learned From Muraki" was written sharply across the top with so much anger that I didn't need any empathy to pick it up. The first thing listed was "Never tell a madman you don't want to die, he'll take it as a challenge." I shut the book after that and put it back, feeling sick. It was a glimpse deeper into Hisoka's troubled mind than I had been prepared for. I wonder if that's what it's like for him to touch my thoughts.  
  
We live in a world of grey, more than friends but not quite lovers . . . trapped in a limbo between desire and disgust, want and fear, a painful reality Hisoka can't escape and I can't save him from. He became a shinigami to find out why he died, to find a purpose beyond confusion and self-pity . . . he stayed a shinigami because he found the answer and the purpose in Muraki. That much is simple. Sometimes I wish he could pass on, and have peace, but I'm too selfish to really embrace that want. But I wonder if that's even possible . . . if he couldn't pass on because he was too tormented to *accept* peace, or because his torment is too great to *be* at peace. It's nice to think of heaven as the ultimate perfection, maybe that's what humans need to believe to make living bearable. But maybe it isn't perfect, maybe you need to meet it halfway, and maybe souls who become shinigami are incapable of that. I don't know, I've never been there.  
  
Almost every night, Hisoka appears next to my bed. I don't question it, I never did. The first time it happened I was too afraid of scaring him off to try and question him. It took a great deal of courage for him, I think, to risk being turned away. I always edge back to make room for him and lift up the covers and he crawls in like a small child in a thunderstorm. Sometimes we talk, if he initiates it, and sometimes we kiss. We don't kiss very often. The first time I tried it, it was a disaster. Hisoka had been thirteen. Thirteen and still a child. And as a child, lust was one of those emotions he'd never had an opportunity to know, and his experience with it on one horrific night translated it as unequivocally, inexorably *bad*. It meant pain and terror and humiliation and a Pavlovian reaction of sheer panic. I should have known better. He spent two hours in the bathroom that night before I could convince him to come out. Whether he was more frightened of me or ashamed of his reaction, I'm not sure. I think he was sick in there. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask.  
  
Three days of avoidance and questioning and worry and avoidance and talking and it was laid to rest. I'm very careful, now, to shield those feelings of attraction from him when they manifest, although they can't help but seep out when we do kiss. Understanding took some of the fear away, exposure and the combination of other, warmer emotions are easing through the rest, but it's painfully slow work. His biggest fear is that I'll get tired of waiting for him, that I'll need more and he'll never be able to give it. He told me that much. The way he keeps his vulnerability locked down makes the occasional outburst or confession or other gesture of trust that much stronger. I'm not going to leave him. He still fears it.  
  
Ultimately, kissing still ends badly, but it always takes just a little longer before something sets him off and the panic wells up in his eyes and he frantically pushes me away. Kissing, in and of itself, he's actually pretty okay with, beyond the normal awkwardness and embarrassment. He says the contact is too intimate, he can feel so much of *me* through it, that there's no comparison. I refrain from pointing out the obvious parallel of intimacies that statement could apply to. It probably wouldn't go over well just yet. It's almost laughable, the complicated game of touch that accompanies the kissing. We've got it mostly figured out though. It's alright to cup my hands around his ribs, but not to move them across his chest. It's alright to hold him at the waist, but he gets edgy if I drift down to his hips. It's alright to lean over him if he feels he's got room to move away, but I can't lean any weight on him or make him feel trapped. It's alright to rub his arms, always through sleeves, but he'll freak if I hold him by the hands or wrists or anything that resembles pinning him down. And knowing all that, I still have to push at those same boundaries, because if I don't *he* never will. I hate that something I did brought that pain to his eyes, but I remind myself that it was already there, constantly inside him, waiting for something to bring it to the surface, and then I redouble my hatred for Muraki. Besides, he doesn't need to worry about his responses triggering my guilt. Sometimes he still locks himself in the bathroom for a while, but less and less often. Most of the time I leave the room, let him collect himself without the added weight of my presence and make two mugs of instant hot chocolate. By the time I return he's calmed down and we sit in silence for a while, drinking (usually I finish his for him), and then he can curl up in my arms again to sleep. We used to try to apologize, me for going to far, him for his reaction . . . but we don't anymore. Those are the nights that sometimes he's still there in the morning.  
  
When he comes just to sleep, he never makes it through the night. I wouldn't know, he gets up so early for his second shower, to wash away the imagined impurity of his nightmares, except that some nights I wake up when he's not there. As far as I know, he's never gone back to his own bed. I don't know if it's the weight of his empathy, touching me for so long in sleep that drives him away, or a more sinister memory of arms around him and weight against his body. Secretly, selfishly, I know, I hope it's the latter, because that's something conceivably surmountable. When I wake without him, I know he's out in the livingroom with the tv on. If he's left the door open, I can see the hallway flickering from it's light. Sometimes I almost find it funny. He didn't have a tv before I moved in, and now he uses it more than I do, even if it's just a covert nightlight. Sometimes I slip out to check on him. If he's awake, I stand in the hallway. He knows I'm there, but doesn't look at me, and then I go back to bed. If he's fallen asleep, I turn off the sound but not the picture, so that if he has a nightmare at least he won't wake up alone in the shadows. But I think, sometimes, he just sits up awake all night. We never talk about it.  
There are really only three types of nightmares for Hisoka, I've learned to identify each of them by the way he wakes up. The first, and most common, is a Muraki nightmare. I have a pretty good idea what happens in those, but I wouldn't want to watch it firsthand. With a Muraki dream, he'll sit bolt upright, as if he can't stand to be on his back another moment, and he doesn't want me to touch him or even come near him until he's fully away. If it's particularly bad, he'll hug himself and sometimes even shake. But after all this time, he can recover from a Muraki dream pretty quickly. The second nightmare is Kyoto. They've become less frequent the more time passes. I know what happens in them too, though I don't know if he just replays the events or if his mind twists it with "what if"s. With a Kyoto dream he's usually in tears by the time he wakes up, and he latches onto me immediately, as if I might disappear. The third nightmare is the kind that has something to do with his childhood. They don't happen very often. I don't know what happens in them, but I've heard him mumble "Tou-sama" in his sleep a few times, so I'm pretty sure I'm right about the subject matter. With one of those, there's no panic or crying or anything, he wakes up perfectly calmly, but he's particularly despondent for most of the morning.  
  
He's always awake by the time I get up, even if I try to get up early. Sometimes he's made breakfast. He can't cook like Wakaba, but I'm not allowed to use the kitchen for anything more than micro waving, under pain of death. His cooking isn't *bad*, not usually, just simple. Rudimentary. He's good at scrambled eggs, but can't seem to flip an omelet. I don't mind, I get mushrooms and cheese even if he's ended up mixing it all. Toast is simple too. Sometimes, if he's feeling particularly nice towards me, he'll make french toast, with extra sugar on mine and nutmeg on his. I like those mornings because I know he doesn't care for sweet things, and he's doing it to tell me he cares about making me happy. He tried frying bacon once, but burned himself on the grease and hasn't attempted since. He says he never had to cook while he was alive. I ask him how he learned. He says he got hungry. I don't ask more than that and he doesn't offer to tell me. I wonder what his life was like. I know his parents locked him up, but that couldn't have been the extent of his life. How could he have learned martial arts? How could he have been outside to run into Muraki . . . ? I wonder if he knows I wonder. And I wonder if he wonders about me.  
  
I don't take it personally when he yells at me, I haven't for a long time. That was one thing I figured out quick. Anger isn't something he really means, it's his defense mechanism. His mask. I can understand that. Being angry makes you feel hot, and righteous . . . it doesn't leave as much room for the fear or the hurt to overwhelm you. For Hisoka, it keeps people at arms length, so he doesn't have to interact with them on a more intimate level. I don't think he ever spent much time around people. I know he hates to cry. 


	2. Purple Infusion

Chapter 1  
  
*******  
  
May 21, 1980 - Kanagawa  
  
Takeshi Touma sighed in poignant frustration as he watched his   
  
partner's expression of misery heightened by his insistence that they   
  
file the damned report and be done with it. He wasn't sure how much   
  
longer he could handle the weight of his older partner's emotional   
  
neediness. Tsuzuki would be a great partner . . . if he could just   
  
learn to detatch himself from his work, but from everything Touma had   
  
heard, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.  
  
"But we haven't found them yet, how can we just close the   
  
case?" Tsuzuki lowered his head from where it had rested against the   
  
bowing trunk of the property's only sakura tree, fixing his partner   
  
of six cases with an imploring stare.  
  
"I think we have, and I'll say as much in the report." Touma   
  
replied, crossing his arms across his chest in defense of that all   
  
too intense gaze. Tsuzuki snorted in retort, his anger with the   
  
injustice of the situation melting easily into bitterness.  
  
"You can't even tell me if the mother is holding the baby, or   
  
the baby the mother. And we haven't *seen* *either* of them."  
  
"*You* haven't seen either of them," Touma snapped back, his   
  
increasing edginess at Tsuzuki's personal involvement scraping the   
  
surface of his demeanor, "I'm *telling* you the baby's there, I can   
  
*feel* the two souls."  
  
"But not Kasane, which means she might still be clinging to   
  
something here . . . we just haven't found yet."  
  
"Tsuzuki." Touma began with a sense of weariness, "an infant   
  
soul is devoid of personality. The *only* reason it would not appear   
  
straight back in Meifu is if the attachment of the mother is too   
  
strong to let it go. Kasane *drowning* herself makes a pretty strong   
  
case for that strength of attachment,"  
  
"By that logic they should have *both* appeared in Meifu   
  
*then*! You can't just rule out the possibility of interference from   
  
another party!"  
  
"But Kasane is a *twin* . . . twins are already part of a   
  
divided soul, if she merged with her sister's spirit she *wouldn't*   
  
show up in Meifu."  
  
"You're still leaving out the baby."  
  
"I keep *telling* you, I can *feel* the baby! It's become part   
  
of the pregnancy!"  
  
"But you're talking about a five month interval between Kasane's   
  
death and Rui's conception, *if* Kasane merged with Rui   
  
automatically, what was holding the baby all that time?"  
  
"Does it *matter* Tsuzuki? If they're both accounted for?" Touma   
  
raised his hand unconsciously, rubbing his temple as he turned his   
  
head to squint at the flaming orange of the sun on the horizon.  
  
"Of course it matters . . ." Tsuzuki's voice had dropped to a   
  
pitch that was dangerously close to despair, and Touma looked back at   
  
him, watching as he lifted his hunched shoulders from the support of   
  
the tree and stood up, staring down at the ground.  
  
"Then suppose the baby merged first . . . same father, twin   
  
mother, the infants themselves would practically be twins . . . she   
  
could have drawn Kasane after her."  
  
"There is no proof Kasane merged into Rui at all. . . and if the   
  
baby had the spiritual strength to pull away from the mother to   
  
attach itself to an infant, why not to return to Meifu?"  
  
"I don't know, Tsuzuki . . . the womb would be a familiar place,   
  
and identical to her own mother's . . . maybe that was just a   
  
stronger impulse."  
  
"But Kasane,"  
  
"When twin souls merge, there *is* no differentiation to detect,   
  
they started out as the same and it's natural to return to that   
  
state. Just let it go, and lets go home." he was pleading now and he   
  
knew it.  
  
"What about the baby. Babies. What will happen to it with two   
  
souls?" Tsuzuki turned his head, looking away from his partner and   
  
in the direction of the main house, despite it's being out of sight.  
  
"It's hard to say." Touma thrust his hands into the pockets of   
  
his khakis, quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "Most of the   
  
time, the two souls are unable to completely blend, and the child   
  
grows up schizophrenic. When the two souls *can* combine into a   
  
single entity, the child is likely to be gifted with some sort   
  
of . . . talent, due to all the extra spiritual energy. Of course,   
  
that happens less frequently, and the way the medical world works   
  
now, with all the births and infant deaths and pregnancies being   
  
grouped in the same place, dual soul schizophrenia is more common   
  
than it ever was in the past. It's too easy for one lingering infant   
  
to attach itself to another."  
  
"So what you're saying is this kid is probably going to grow up   
  
crazy, and if we had come here first thing when the mother and baby   
  
didn't show up, he would have been a normal child with a shot at a   
  
life." Touma could see Tsuzuki's fists clenching at his sides in   
  
barely contained anger and self-recrimination "Isn't there any way   
  
to,"  
  
"No." Touma spoke as firmly as he could muster, there was no way   
  
anyone had ever found to detatch one soul from another once they had   
  
begun to bond, and attempting it would no doubt end in failure and   
  
Tsuzuki would be worse off for having hoped.  
  
"It's just so wrong!" the older man whirled on him suddenly, his   
  
dizzying purple gaze uncontainable in his anger, "If this is so   
  
common and irreversible, they should *have* shinigami posted in every   
  
maternity ward! To intercept the souls before it happens!" Touma   
  
shook his head sadly.  
  
"That will never happen . . . think of the cost, how many   
  
shinigami would have to be employed to keep watch over that many   
  
locations. Besides," here he sighed, looking away from Tsuzuki once   
  
more to the rapidly darkening sky, "of all the shinigami who have   
  
ever started with spiritual strength or powers that they had while   
  
living, more than two thirds are dual souls. The rest are like Wakaba-  
  
chan, and come from lines of onmiyouji or other spiritualists. If   
  
they started policing the merging of infant souls, think how it would   
  
affect the division in the long run."  
  
"That's obscene."  
  
"That's bureaucracy." Touma shrugged, still looking away.  
  
"So you . . .?"  
  
"I'm a dual soul. That's why I've always been able to detect   
  
auras. I'm one of the lucky ones."  
  
"And the baby they're having now . . . ? What are the odds the   
  
souls will blend properly . . . ?" The note of despair in the man's   
  
voice was gut wrenching.  
  
"As it stands now . . . I can feel two distinct presences in   
  
that woman's womb . . ." he could almost hear Tsuzuki deflating back   
  
into misery behind him, "but, then, sometimes it isn't till the time   
  
of birth, when the infant is most fully developed and closest to the   
  
state of the first infant when *it* died that the souls can   
  
completely blend . . ." he added, in hopes of easing the man's mind a   
  
little.  
  
"So the kid has a chance . . .?" Touma nodded without turning   
  
to look at his partner, afraid of what they might see in each other.  
  
"Let's just write it up and get out of here, Tsuzuki . . . there   
  
isn't anything more we can do."  
  
"Kasane . . ."  
  
"Kasane is joined to her twin, she must be. And her baby has   
  
joined to her sister's. I'm sure of it." His statement was met by a   
  
long silence, so long that he began to wonder at Tsuzuki's emotional   
  
state before he finally replied.  
  
"All right. We'll write it up. I just . . . I hope this baby   
  
brings some happiness back to this family."   
  
*******  
  
April 6, 1998 - Meifu  
  
Mornings, Hisoka had decided, were better than evenings. He   
  
could recall a time, when he had been very small, that he had loved   
  
summer evenings. He could recall watching the sun set from the top of   
  
a grassy slope on his ancestral lands just west of the main house,   
  
and the world becoming cool and mysterious in the darkness, and   
  
chasing fireflies barefoot with wet grass sticking between his toes until his mother would come looking and scold him for staining his   
  
nice clothes. And they were always nice clothes, whether they were   
  
modern or traditional. Kurosaki Rui had always been insistent on that   
  
point, that he was the son and heir of a great family and heritage   
  
and it did not befit him to dress commonly or to rough-house and make   
  
a mess of himself like other children did. Though his father had been   
  
the patriarch and adhered strictly to the family code of honor and   
  
tradition, as long as his son conducted himself with dignity and   
  
behaved with respect and obedience, Hisoka didn't frankly think the   
  
man would have cared if he had worn jeans and amused himself in his   
  
spare time.  
  
But his mind was drifting to things he preferred not to think   
  
about. He enjoyed mornings now, when the sunlight seemed so much more   
  
golden and infinitely soft, when the whole world was somehow soft,   
  
and fresh, and faintly sweet with the scent of the same dew that had   
  
once stained his clothes. He had found, to his surprise, that he   
  
enjoyed listening to the birds in the morning. They sounded more   
  
cheerful and harmonious in the early morning, while later in the day   
  
it seemed to him that they were all bickering with each other. The   
  
sunsets he had watched in his childhood now seemed like the burning   
  
out of an exhausted day, and he could not enjoy the colors of the sky   
  
properly for the rising tide of anxiety that heralded the onset of   
  
all-out night. But the sunrise he had come to enjoy as it was softer,   
  
less blazing, and lit up the world rather than darkening it. Never   
  
mind that his brain was frozen in adolescent development and his   
  
serotonin levels would never properly balance out and his internal   
  
clock was perpetually set to make him want to sleep late - if nothing   
  
else, his parents had taught him discipline which, despite   
  
everything, he was begrudgingly grateful for, and he could drag   
  
himself up day in and day out no matter how inviting the pillow and   
  
the warmth of the bed and even the security of Tsuzuki, if that was   
  
where he happened to be . . . and he could have the untainted morning.  
  
Of course, it was well past sunrise now, though not late   
  
enough that the soft, golden, misty sense of light and warmth had   
  
faded, and he sat on the two wooden steps leading up to the narrow   
  
back porch of his small house, with his arm hooked over the rail from   
  
underneath.  
  
"We're going to end up being late." he said finally, watching   
  
the toes of his sneakers as they nudged slightly at the faintly muddy   
  
ground where the rested, digging a tiny trench. In the past months   
  
(he wasn't sure how many anymore, as the season never changed anyway)   
  
his neat, relatively barren little backyard had gradually exploded into color as his new house-mate claimed the uncharted territory as   
  
his own, turning grass and muddy patches into brilliant flowerbeds.   
  
Said house-mate, on his knees at one erratically landscaped portion   
  
of the new garden with trowel in hand, looked up from his quiet work   
  
long enough to check his watch.  
  
"We've got time, we'll just blink straight into the office."  
  
"I wanted to walk." the boy on the steps murmured only half   
  
audibly. He *had* wanted to walk, he liked the feel of walking. Maybe   
  
it was a lingering effect of his long illness, being bedridden, but   
  
he enjoyed walking down the street, the way his rubber soles seemed   
  
to nearly bounce against the pavement and he allowed the slightest   
  
spring in his step despite his closely guarded posture and   
  
indifferent air. "You know," he continued out loud, "they'd probably   
  
grow just as perfectly without you doing this every day, just like   
  
everything else."  
  
"I know," the older man replied cheerfully, "but I like doing   
  
it anyway." That was that then. If playing caretaker to a perpetually   
  
blooming, perpetually perfect garden gave Tsuzuki a short respite of   
  
true happiness, who was he to challenge it. He dropped the argument   
  
but uttered a long suffering sigh to save face. Tsuzuki was   
  
resonating faint waves of amusement with him and looked up to meet   
  
his bored expression with a wide grin, raising one finger and   
  
winking "Think of this, as your moment of zen."  
  
"It's *your* zen, not mine." the boy snapped back with no   
  
real venom, faintly agitated at the sense of Tsuzuki laughing at him.  
  
"You seem peaceful enough, sitting and watching like a cat in   
  
the sun. You could leave without me, but you don't." The older man   
  
retorted smugly before he rose, wiping the damp earth off his trowel   
  
before pulling off his gloves. Hisoka didn't have anything to say to   
  
that, so he didn't say anything at all, untangling his arm from the   
  
railing and scooting over as Tsuzuki sat down beside him, his longer   
  
legs folding up comically where Hisoka's younger form fit   
  
neatly. "You do like them, don't you?" the man's face and voice came   
  
across calm enough, but there was a ripple, a twinge of anxiousness   
  
dimly reflected in his eyes that the boy had come to recognize. It   
  
was a small thing, an unimportant thing, but it was a thing Tsuzuki   
  
wanted to give him, or wanted him to share with him, he wasn't sure   
  
which, if the man was being generous or needy, but he relented   
  
slightly.  
  
"It's nicer this way than it was, at least. Don't you think   
  
it's kind of feminine though?" Tsuzuki's anxiety seemed to dissipate   
  
at that, and he grinned again, leaning over and tapping the boy's   
  
nose in a patronizing manner that would have gotten him punched if   
  
there had been anyone to see it.  
  
"I don't know about *that*, samurai used to arrange flowers   
  
before going into battle, and you, my young friend," here he   
  
punctuated with another tap that made Hisoka contemplate punching him   
  
anyway, "are a samurai, *so* . . . by my estimation, this should be   
  
right up your alley."  
  
"Ah." Hisoka replied in a noncommital tone as Tsuzuki   
  
withdrew from his personal space, leaning back into his own side of   
  
the steps.  
  
"Which ones do you like?" he asked casually. For a moment   
  
Hisoka was silent, surveying the garden studiously, taking his answer   
  
more seriously than Tsuzuki had probably intended.  
  
"I don't really care for the pink ones so much . . . I like   
  
the darker ones best. Those . . ." he pointed self-consciously   
  
towards the edge of the yard where a line of tall, dark flowers stood   
  
up against the fence.  
  
"Irises." Tsuzuki supplied quietly, trying not to sound   
  
condescending in giving him a lesson. Hisoka only nodded and pointed   
  
to another patch around the base of a young tree.  
  
"And those . . ."  
  
"Mojave Aster."  
  
"This one . . ."  
  
"That's an orchid."  
  
"And those over there."  
  
"Purple-loosestrife."  
  
"And that one."  
  
"Foxglove." Tsuzuki was grinning madly now, and fairly   
  
radiating delight and amusement.  
  
"What?" Hisoka frowned, suddenly suspicious. Tsuzuki only   
  
shook his head, reigning in his smile.  
  
"It's nothing, it probably doesn't mean anything and you'll   
  
get flustered and tell me so, but it makes me happy so don't worry   
  
and just let me keep it so I can enjoy it." Hisoka blinked once,   
  
twice, then shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, still frowning.   
  
It probably *didn't* mean anything . . . but every flower Hisoka had   
  
professed to like was purple. Hisoka either hadn't noticed, or it   
  
really didn't mean anything, but for the moment, to think it did,   
  
made Tsuzuki immensely happy.  
  
They continued to sit in companionable silence for a while,   
  
all hopes of walking to work flying farther away with each passing   
  
minute, but Hisoka found he didn't really mind anymore. This was   
  
calm . . . this was pleasant . . . this was a good morning.  
  
"So . . . where do you want to go for lunch?" Tsuzuki   
  
stretched his legs out and leaned back, resting his elbows on the   
  
porch. Hisoka snorted.  
  
"We haven't even gotten to work yet and you're thinking about   
  
lunch?"  
  
"Well, this way we aren't wasting work time discussing it."   
  
the older man replied with a cheery logic. Hisoka's snappy retort was   
  
lost as something green moved beside his foot and he yelped in panic,   
  
jumping up onto the porch without seeming to have ever stood up.   
  
Tsuzuki burst out laughing as the boy stood in the center of the   
  
floor, looking around his feet anxiously.  
  
"Shut *up* and be useful! Kill it or something!" The boy   
  
hissed, glaring at his partner between furtive glances at the ground.  
  
"Kill *what*?" the words were hard to get out through the   
  
humor bubbling unstoppably in his throat.  
  
"The *snake*!"  
  
"That was a garter snake! Don't *tell* me a big, tough, I'm-  
  
not-a- kid shinigami like you is afraid of an itty-bitty garter   
  
snake."  
  
"I *hate* snakes."  
  
"So I gather," he lost his train of thought for a moment as   
  
the laughing started all over again at his mental image of Hisoka   
  
standing on a chair in a dress with a rolling pin, but he didn't dare   
  
describe this image out loud.  
  
"I *hate* snakes, I've *always* hated snakes, when I'm five   
  
hundred years old I'll *still* hate snakes, I used to have   
  
*nightmares* about snakes as a kid, now stop laughing and kill it! Or   
  
are you too much of a head-case to whack something as stupid as a   
  
snake without a massive guilt trip!" Tsuzuki managed to sober up and   
  
give him a wounded look.  
  
"Aren't much for tact today, are we." he remarked dryly.  
  
"Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic."   
  
Hisoka shot back, crossing his arms defensively over his chest in a   
  
way that made his shoulders seem smaller and his form younger.   
  
Tsuzuki softened and then began to smile again.  
  
"Then you must be the greatest wit that ever lived."  
  
"I'm Oscar fucking Wilde, kill the damn snake! *What*?!"   
  
Tsuzuki was grinning again and Hisoka's irritation was mounting.  
  
"You're scared of snakes." that seemed, to Tsuzuki, a perfect   
  
explanation.  
  
"What's your point?"  
  
"You're letting me *see* you *being* scared of snakes."   
  
Hisoka didn't have anything to say to that. 


	3. Breakthrough

Breakthrough these barriers of pain,  


Breakthrough to the sunshine from the rain,  


Make my feelings known towards you,  


Turn my heart inside and out for you now.  


If I could only reach you,  


If I could make you smile,  


If I could only reach you...  


That would really be a breakthrough  


  
  


*******

  


Chapter Two

  


*******

October 18, 1980 - Kanagawa

  
  


The kitchen of the Kurosaki family's main house was uneasy. In truth, the entire household had existed in a state of unease for just over a year, and if one wanted to be completely precise, the whole of the Kurosaki family had been overshadowed by unease for generations. However, on this particular night every shadow of worry and discomfort plaguing the house seemed to have converged with a vicious edge of anxiousness and taken up residence in the kitchen, supported by nearly every servant of the house congregating in the same spot. 

For those who had served the family long, for many of them had in fact served for generations, it was a climactic evening, but not a particularly spectacular one in the long history of secrets and sacrifice that went with the Kurosaki name. For the girls who had been there long enough to have known the kind, if brief, mistress of the house, Kurosaki Kasane, the entire affair seemed somehow sordid. It was disturbing, unnatural, madness even for a man to marry the identical twin of his late wife, and before there was new grass over the poor woman's grave no less. No good could come of a grieving man trying to replace the woman he'd loved so entirely. They were wary of Kurosaki Rui, and wary of what was now going on rooms away, and Nobiki, who had been Kasane's private maid before joining the kitchen staff to avoid her uncanny replacement, had cut herself twice in the last hour while trying to chop vegetables. 

No doctor had been summoned. But then, it had been done that way for generations, and as the older family servants did not comment on it, neither did the newer. What was unusual was that neither had anyone else been summoned. In fact, they had been individually, unarguably forbidden against sending any word of the situation to Iwao, the Kurosaki Nagare's brother and the coming infant's rightful uncle. The implications of this and, moreover, the inevitable repercussions only served to heighten the malaise of the congregation.

It couldn't be much longer, the elder assured the younger . . . Kurosaki Rui had taken to her bed pleading pains only halfway through breakfast, and labor had been diagnosed before noon. It was now past eight o'clock and the sky was dark. Kurosaki Nagare had left the site of his wife's childbed for a sum total of perhaps an hour and a half during the course of the day, and despite the break from tradition and arguable impropriety of it, was vehemently insistent on remaining there. But then, the poor man had been away on business when his first wife had given birth to a child that hadn't lived and drowned herself in grief, and so they shook their heads and pitied him and Old Ayako, who had helped birth Nagare himself, let him stay.

Little Seto, the groundskeeper's son, who was two years old and more interested in running up and down the hall than in waiting for news of a new baby, cried out from beyond the doorway, commanding attention from the room. A moment later he rode across the threshold on Old Ayako's hip and was returned to his nervous mother, and all faces turned to the gnarled old woman. Old Ayako, who was becoming stooped in her old age, drew herself up to her full height, basking for a moment in the power she held and the respect it momentarily commanded before speaking.

"Rui has borne a boy."

The kitchen erupted with tangible relief, accompanied by sighs and comments and other audible notes of elation.

"Is he healthy?" a voice carried anxiously.

"Healthy enough, if his lungs are any indication. The little thing just didn't want to come, and he raised quite a fit at the indignity of it all. I do believe he consciously held being born against me." Her statement was met by both celebration and laughter, and she knew her time of importance was over as she was chided for such a silly thought. Joy bled into hope, and into musings on the future.

"Thank goodness, a healthy boy."

"Were you worried?"

"A Kurosaki heir, someone should bring the news into the village."

"Perhaps now Iwao-sama will be summoned?"

"A healthy baby will bring some life back to this house."

"And happiness back to Nagare-sama."

"Do you know the name, old woman?"

Old Ayako raised her head once more, lifting herself from her bent stance as she had been petting little Seto's head. "The name?"

"The child's name."

"Nagare-sama has deigned to pass on the name Hisoka, as his daughter never had time to make good use of it."

Once more silence prevailed over the room, as those assembled absorbed this small piece of information. Kurosaki Nagare had now not only married his wife's twin, but renamed their child together what he had intended for his first child.

"Perhaps . . . it will all be for the best. As if the tragedy never happened." murmurs and nods agreed hesitantly with this cautious assessment.

"It will be for the best, that child will be nothing but good for this family." Old Ayako spoke firmly, commanding attention once again before she continued. "That child, that baby knew his father. He entered the world all anger and screaming, screaming and flailing while he was cleaned and while he was bundled . . . but the moment I placed him in his father's arms he was quiet. In all my life, I've never seen the like, just suddenly quiet and calm, and then sleeping perfectly happily. And Nagare-sama, he won't let the infant go. Not even for Rui to hold, though I told him he must. I left him just sitting there, holding him, and the baby just sleeping."

*******

  


April 6, 1998 - Meifu

"You're so mean!" That was not an uncommon complaint to be heard in the halls of the Diet building when Tsuzuki was on duty. Nor was it uncommon for the complaint to be directed at Hisoka, as it was now. What was uncommon was for anyone, particularly Hisoka, to take it as seriously as he was in this instance. The younger partner stood up from his desk abruptly, knocking a few pens to the floor and lunging for his empty Styrofoam cup.

"I don't want to discuss this here, I'm getting coffee."

"Hisoka!" Far from his endearing whine, Tsuzuki's low yell was demanding, laced with an edge of genuine irritation as he darted after the boy on his attempted escape to the break room. "I would have thought you'd have preferred discussing it in private and not out here." he hissed as he caught Hisoka's arm, once reaching his destination had forced him to stop.

"I would *prefer* not to discuss it at *all*." Hisoka replied sharply as he shook his arm free and grabbed the coffee pot, sloshing the hot liquid sloppily into his cup.

"I'm just trying to help-"

"Well who asked you to!" the boy cut him off sharply, a faint cracking in the back of his throat testament to both him perpetual pubescence as well as his emotional state.

"Didn't you?" Tsuzuki stared at the back of his denim jacket and the slope of his narrow shoulders with a beseeching look that his partner could feel rather than see.

"Not like this!" The boy hissed as he whirled around, catching himself against the edge of the cheap card table that served as their snack counter and leaning back against it and away from Tsuzuki as he faced him, "Not behind my back! I never asked you to turn around and tell Watari everything!"

"I didn't tell Watari everything, I just asked him about scar tissue." the older shinigami protested defensively.

"And I'm sure he won't jump to *any* conclusions." Hisoka snapped back, tightening his grip on the edge of the table until his knuckles were turning white.

"You know, people besides me in this office care about you, when are you going to accept that?" Tsuzuki was growing equally peevish, crossing his arms across his chest as if that were some kind of barrier between the two of them. It was usually a good idea to maintain some distance from the empath when emotions ran high.

"You wouldn't understand."

"That's angsty teenager cliche number three, you want to stop being stigmatized for the way you look? Stop acting like a kid." Tsuzuki could feel his irritation rising and gritted his teeth to curb it while Hisoka glared at him worth bullets. The subject of age and, ostensibly, appearance was touchy at best, and Tsuzuki was dangerously close to hitting below the belt.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm an angsty teenager. What you see is what you get. My frontal lobe is underdeveloped so I'm never gonna be any good at self-restraint. My hormones are spiking so I'm always gonna be an emotional roller coaster. I've got all kinds of unbalanced chemicals that are never gonna even out so I'm always going to be irrational."

"Sounds more like you're making excuses."

"I don't want to get into a whole 'nature vs. nurture' debate with you. And I don't *want* them to care about me, I want them to *respect* me. I don't *want* to be everyone's little brother figure, I don't *want* to be looked out for, I don't *want* to be pitied and comforted. I don't *want* to walk down the hall and see all the sympathetic, knowing looks and feel all the 'poor boy, what he's been through'. I am *not* a kicked puppy, or a charity case, or made of glass. All I want is to pull my own weight, do my job, and not get any special treatment. I don't need Watari breathing down my neck to be able to cope."

"So caring automatically means pity?"

"People only start to care about things they start sympathizing for, that's human nature."

"What about me?"

"It's different."

"Why?"

"You . . . understand me. There's a big difference between sympathizing and empathizing."

"Only because you *let* me, Hisoka! If you would just . . . people can surprise you. You call them friends but only because you keep them at arms length where it's safe." Tsuzuki was unable to suppress a tired sigh as he regarded his partner with all the patience he could muster.

"I don't want everybody and their brother to know what happened to me." The quiet statement was a reiteration of something he'd never directly vocalized before, and something in Tsuzuki snapped, driving him to move forward and grasp the boy's arm insistently before going on in a low voice.

"You must think we're all pretty stupid because knowing Muraki, it isn't really hard to figure out. The only one dwelling on it is *you*. That's *why* I talked to Watari, I just thought . . . If we can't break the curse, if we could at least get rid of the scars on the surface, maybe it'd be a little bit easier for you, you know, without the constant reminder, without having to think about it every time you bathe or change clothes or . . ." or try to be intimate. Tsuzuki didn't say the last part, it sounded so selfish to his own ears, whether it was something Hisoka also wanted or not. His younger partner understood where he had been going anyway, but his expression was cool and unreadable. Two heartbeats went by in silence, except for the rattling gurgle of the coffeepot. Then it was three. Then five. Then Hisoka spoke.

"It wouldn't make everything magically okay, you know."

"I know. But if it would make it just a little better . . . it would be worth it. Muraki put them there and made sure you could never do anything without suffering, didn't he? If we *could* get rid of the scars . . . wouldn't it be easier to let go of?"

"I wouldn't forget."

"I wouldn't ask you to. But you wouldn't have to remember either. At least, not every time you looked at yourself." For another long moment they regarded each other in silence, until Hisoka broke it to turn away and add cream to his half cup of black coffee.

"What did he say . . . ?" Tsuzuki's face softened into a faint smile that might have been relief.

"Let's go back into the office and discuss it in private before someone walks in on us." Hisoka glanced around the empty room dully, and then nodded, straightening to let Tsuzuki take the lead back down the hall, but for a long moment Tsuzuki only watched him, with an expression of searching and faint hurt that Hisoka didn't understand. "One of these days," Tsuzuki added, with only a hint of his usual playfulness, "I'm going to get a smile out of you."

Hisoka didn't know how to say that he didn't remember how to smile.


End file.
